Google restores banned travel website

Julian Lee

EVEN in this day and age, Goliath can still be humbled by a David - in this case a small businessman who went to the regulators after Google arbitrarily kicked him off its network.

In December, entrepreneur Mark Bowyer of the travel website Rusty Compass outlined his grievances to New South Wales Fair Trading after Google ruled his site ''posed a risk of generating invalid activity'' - the company's euphemism for click fraud.

He is one of a number of publishers to have found themselves arbitrarily locked out of Google for apparently contravening the rules around its AdSense advertising program.

Sharing revenue from ads served on sites covered by Google accounts for a quarter of its revenues and covers about 70 per cent of the internet.

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Attempts to see Google's evidence and appeal directly to a Google employee came to nothing, forcing Mr Bowyer to complain to Fair Trading that Google was abusing its power by failing to tell him why his site was banned and Google was withholding money made from ads.

Last month, after an initial investigation by Fair Trading, Google told him that after ''thoroughly reviewing'' his AdSense account it had reinstated it and refunded him the $131 it had withheld when it had suspended his account last September.

A Fair Trading spokeswoman confirmed that ''full redress was provided to the consumer following our intervention''.

While reversal of decisions at appeal stage do happen, it is extremely rare for Google to reverse an appeal decision. (Mr Bowyer's appeal was turned down last year.)

The chief executive of E-Web Marketing, Gary Ng, said that given it was a case of David up against Goliath, Mr Bowyer could have either turned to social networks or appealed to Fair Trading.

''There's really only those two options when it comes to Google. It's when you make a lot of noise that they'll act.''

Mr Ng, who advises small businesses on search marketing, questioned Google's insistence of refusing to deal with aggrieved clients by phone or in person.

''How do we know what Google actually does when you launch an appeal? We don't. They won't tell you so it doesn't exactly fill you with confidence.''

Mr Bowyer said he was relieved to have the ''reputational slur'' lifted, but for four months he was left wondering the fate of his two-year-old website, which offers independent advice to people travelling to Asia.

''Google still hasn't seen fit to introduce a human into the process. Anonymous template emails are still the order of the day. And I still don't even know what happened,'' he said.

''Google's market power in platforms like AdSense, search and now the revamped YouTube give them a big hand in determining which start-up publishers and broadcasters make it and which don't. That's a lot of power for a company that refuses to have a conversation.''